Adoption procedures dissected Hilary Halpin reviews: Adoption: Policy and Practice* by Iris Goodacre So little is known and even less is written about the or failure of Legal Adoption that everyone working in the field?magistrates, case workers, family doctors, health visitors and others?will welcome this book. It is a report of four years' research, sponsored by the National Association for Mental Health. Miss Robina Addis chaired the advisory panel and the research was financed by the Buttle Trust and made possible by the goodwill of an anonymous children's department, various adoption agencies and, last but by no means least, the co-operation of 90 adopting couples. That these couples were willing to help has turned what could well have been the usual report of cases taken from the files and looked at once again, into a fascinating and lively document, constantly reflecting how the adopters felt about each stage of the 'processing'. success
Maintaining privacy
Mrs. Goodacre looked through all the 295 files of adoption completed in one children's department area during four years 1955-1958. She divided them into roughly five categories?local authority place-
ments, agency placements, privately arranged adoptions, relatives adopting nieces, nephews or grand-
children, and married couples adopting the wife's premarital child?the greatest number, 102, falling into this last category. She then selected about 20 from each group, 108 in total and, in order to retain the privacy implicit in the Adoption Act and which is so important to the adopters themselves, the children's department wrote to each adopter, explaining the nature of the study, how it might help future adopters and inviting them to take part, but saying that if they were unwilling they would hear nothing further. It is interesting that only 18 out of the 108 refused and these were mainly mothers adopting their own child.
Adopters' feelings The book is based
on
interviews with these 90 adopt-
ers, checked with the files of the children's department and the various agencies concerned. Each stage
is considered?the decision to adopt, the attitude of the applicants and of their friends and relatives, how the applicants felt about their inability to have children and the difficulties they experienced in finding out about adoption. Then the preliminary interview, the cheated feeling of the applicants if it was not thorough enough on the one hand, and, alternatively, the applicants who felt they had been so grilled that their chances were nil, on the other. The home visit and the feeling of being inspected, the time couples had to wait not knowing if they were 'passed', feeling the months slip by and wondering if they might have to Allen &
Unwin, 35s*
Separation
and
adoption
start all over
again. Each couple felt, with reason, that anything as big in their life as adopting a child should require special partnership between them and the placement agency and only if this was achieved, did they feel entirely confident. Caustic criticism Mrs. Goodacre examines thoroughly the theories and ideas about matching, how much was told to the adopters, whether this helped them to accept the baby and whether it was sufficient to refer to later, when the child wanted to know about his natural parents. and visiting, once the baby was placed, appear to have been welcomed, but most couples were too engrossed in the early mechanical processes of infant care really to absorb casework help. The adopters felt they would have welcomed help later, even after the case had been legalised. The delay of the courts came in for some caustic criticism from most of the adopters. This is hardly surprising. The chapter on adoption by relatives is particularly interesting, not only emphasising how confusing it can be for a child to find his mother has suddenly become his sister, but how whole families can be disrupted by this kind of adoption. There is a daughter who leaves her child to be brought up by her mother and never returns home, or the sad and moving account by a girl who brought up her unmarried sister's baby as twin to her own and said 'there's a rift in our family I don't think I can ever bring back my feelings for my sister, they seem to be shattered.' Iris Goodacre has written up her findings in a most readable way and statistics, thanks to Dr. Roy Parker, are clear and in small doses. It is very evident how much could be done to improve all the services which lead to the legal adoption of a child. If each worker who reads the book even starts to move one step forward, it will have been a book worth writing.
Supervision
...
Maintaining privacy
Mrs. Goodacre looked through all the 295 files of adoption completed in one children's department area during four years 1955-1958. She divided them into roughly five categories?local authority place-
ments, agency placements, privately arranged adoptions, relatives adopting nieces, nephews or grand-
children, and married couples adopting the wife's premarital child?the greatest number, 102, falling into this last category. She then selected about 20 from each group, 108 in total and, in order to retain the privacy implicit in the Adoption Act and which is so important to the adopters themselves, the children's department wrote to each adopter, explaining the nature of the study, how it might help future adopters and inviting them to take part, but saying that if they were unwilling they would hear nothing further. It is interesting that only 18 out of the 108 refused and these were mainly mothers adopting their own child.
Adopters' feelings The book is based
on
interviews with these 90 adopt-
ers, checked with the files of the children's department and the various agencies concerned. Each stage
is considered?the decision to adopt, the attitude of the applicants and of their friends and relatives, how the applicants felt about their inability to have children and the difficulties they experienced in finding out about adoption. Then the preliminary interview, the cheated feeling of the applicants if it was not thorough enough on the one hand, and, alternatively, the applicants who felt they had been so grilled that their chances were nil, on the other. The home visit and the feeling of being inspected, the time couples had to wait not knowing if they were 'passed', feeling the months slip by and wondering if they might have to Allen &
Unwin, 35s*
Separation
and
adoption
start all over
again. Each couple felt, with reason, that anything as big in their life as adopting a child should require special partnership between them and the placement agency and only if this was achieved, did they feel entirely confident. Caustic criticism Mrs. Goodacre examines thoroughly the theories and ideas about matching, how much was told to the adopters, whether this helped them to accept the baby and whether it was sufficient to refer to later, when the child wanted to know about his natural parents. and visiting, once the baby was placed, appear to have been welcomed, but most couples were too engrossed in the early mechanical processes of infant care really to absorb casework help. The adopters felt they would have welcomed help later, even after the case had been legalised. The delay of the courts came in for some caustic criticism from most of the adopters. This is hardly surprising. The chapter on adoption by relatives is particularly interesting, not only emphasising how confusing it can be for a child to find his mother has suddenly become his sister, but how whole families can be disrupted by this kind of adoption. There is a daughter who leaves her child to be brought up by her mother and never returns home, or the sad and moving account by a girl who brought up her unmarried sister's baby as twin to her own and said 'there's a rift in our family I don't think I can ever bring back my feelings for my sister, they seem to be shattered.' Iris Goodacre has written up her findings in a most readable way and statistics, thanks to Dr. Roy Parker, are clear and in small doses. It is very evident how much could be done to improve all the services which lead to the legal adoption of a child. If each worker who reads the book even starts to move one step forward, it will have been a book worth writing.
Supervision
...
